Manhattan Lullaby (5 page)

In New York, there are lofts and then there are
lofts
. Paulie's loft occupied the entire second floor of the building at number 8 Thomas Street and was more like a luxury uptown co-op than a downtown alternative living space. Even though it was tucked away from prying eyes inside the deceptively rundown warehouse, it had all the amenities money could buy and then some, including an intercom system outside the front door of the building.

Luba leaned close to the speaker and called out. “It's me, Paulie. Let me in. I forgot my key.”

A second later the buzzer sounded and Luba left the dirt and grime of the outer world for the pristine marble magnificence of a vestibule that signaled to anyone who was allowed to get this far that the resident of this particular loft was loaded. And Paulie was loaded indeed. In fact, she was so well-heeled that the only word that described her appropriately was “heiress”.

Pauline McCormick, the slender thirty-six-year-old owner of this and two other buildings on the street, was the only child of the man who had started Buddy's Bakeries, later to become McCormick Foods International. To say that there was never any chance she would go hungry was therefore an understatement.

Of course Buddy McCormick would have preferred a daughter who wore dresses instead of pants; who lived in suburbia rather than
sub
urbia; and who had a husband and three children instead of a synthesizer and three guitars, but, all in all he figured that Paulie wasn't the worst daughter a man could have, though he didn't invite her out to the country club too often.

When Luba arrived upstairs she flung her bags down in the hallway and hurried into the dimly lit living room. She was dying to tell Paulie the news, but she wanted to savor the moment, not just blurt it out. After all, it wasn't every day a wish came true.

“God! I'm bushed,” she cried, flinging herself onto the couch. “I've been shopping,” she added as an afterthought.

Paulie was sitting in the tub chair across from the couch, the heel of her left foot balancing on her right knee, a guitar resting comfortably on her lap. Behind her on the wall was a large framed poster of her band, Drek, with Paulie in leather jeans and a torn T-shirt standing menacingly in the center, holding her favorite guitar like a machine gun.

“Listen to this.” She played a couple of riffs. “What do you think?”

“Hmm.” Luba wagged her hand back and forth. “It needs work,” she said and then, dismissing the music, “Don't you want to know what I bought?”

“You know clothes don't interest me,” replied Paulie, running a hand through her short-cropped black hair.

“Don't you want to know how much I spent?”

Paulie shrugged indifferently. “I'll find out when I get my American Express bill.”

Her indifference infuriated the younger girl, and Luba leaped to her feet and grabbed the largest of the bags, which happened to have the Bloomingdale's insignia on it.

“You've just got to see this!” she cried, tugging a tissue-wrapped something out of the bag. “I nearly died when I saw it!” She ripped off the tissue and flung it onto the floor. “Look!” She waved the jacket over her head. “Isn't it gorgeous?”

Paulie raised one heavy black eyebrow.

Undaunted, Luba continued to extol the virtues of her purchase. “It's a pilot's jacket. Just like the ones they used to wear in the war. Not Vietnam. The one before that. Or was it the one before the one before that?” She stopped to think, her young face creasing with the effort. “Oh well, it doesn't matter. The point is, it's an authentic copy of an original flight jacket. See, they even made it from distressed leather so it would look old.” She brought the jacket over for Paulie to examine.

Paulie felt the sleeve. “Distressed? It looks more like suicidal to me. What was the pilot—a kamikaze? It's crap.”

Luba's face fell. “You don't like it.”

Paulie sighed. “It's not that I don't like it. It's just that if you're going to buy leather, buy good leather. This stuff is obviously made from split skins. It's stiff and it'll crack the first time you wear it in the cold.”

Luba defended the jacket. “But that's the whole point.”

Paulie shrugged.

Luba chewed on her bottom lip for a moment. “O.K., O.K., I'll take it back.” Disappointed, she put the jacket back into the bag. She didn't feel like showing off the rest of the things she had bought. Not now. Paulie could be so critical. Then she remembered her news.

“Hey, guess what?”

“You know I don't like to play guessing games.” Humming to herself, Paulie strummed a few chords on the guitar.

Luba persisted. She wanted the other woman to tease the news out of her. “Don't you want to know why I went shopping?”

Paulie slipped the guitar down beside her chair. “You don't need a why. You shop the way some people breathe. It's an involuntary physiological response.”

Luba pouted.

Paulie relented. “But, since I know that all this is your way of getting around to telling me something that's obviously really thrumming your motor, why don't you just come right out and say it?”

Luba took a deep breath and then let it out. “I got the part.”

“What part?” Absently Paulie reached for a cigarette, and holding it between her upper and lower bicuspids she struck a match and lit it, sucking a large measure of smoke down into her lungs.

“What part!” cried Luba, jumping to her feet in frustration. “What part!”

Paulie waved her down. “Take it easy and hold it down, will you. You'll wake up Rogue.”

Luba immediately clamped a hand over her mouth. “Sorry, I forgot.”

“Yeah,” said Paulie with emphasis. “You've been doing that a lot lately.”

Chagrined into temporary silence, Luba sat down again and picked distractedly at the nubbles in the couch.

“You don't care about my career,” she mumbled, her head down.

“What career?”

Luba's head flew up and she stared Paulie right in the eye, challenging her. “I'm an actress and don't you forget it.”

Paulie stared back, a thin wisp of smoke drifting demonically out of each nostril. “You're the one who wanted to forget it. Remember after you did those two movies. What were they called now …” She made the pretense of trying to remember. “Oh yes,
Ninja Nuns and the Sisters of Satan
and the sequel, let's see what was that called …”

“
Ninja Nurses and the Doctors of Death
,” offered Luba quietly.

“That was it. How could I forget. Your
career
seems to have consisted of you playing a human sacrifice and a dead body. Move over, Jane Fonda.”

“Everyone has to start somewhere,” said Luba defensively. And then, to get her own back, “We don't all have daddy's money to fall back on, you know.”

Paulie's face softened a little. Antagonistic by nature, she often drove people to the point where they felt the need to hit back before she let them off the hook. “Yeah, I guess we can't all be the Cookieman's kid, can we?” She gave one of her crooked, incredibly Gary Cooper-like grins.

But Luba wasn't about to let down her guard. She pursed her lips and stared at the floor.

“So come on, then, tell me the news,” Paulie prodded her. “What part did you get? Something alive this time, I hope.”

Luba looked up again. The anger was washed away by a big grin. “You bet it's alive. I mean
she's
alive. I'm the second female lead. I even have lines and I don't have to die or anything.” The excitement shone out of her bright blue eyes.

Paulie nodded. She was still somewhat doubtful. “So, what's the picture called?”

Luba hedged. “Don't let the title put you off. It's going to be a very serious picture. They're talking about getting a couple of biggies for the leads …”

“What's it called?” asked Paulie again with quiet determination.

Luba took a deep breath. “
The Witches of Wall Street
.”

“Jesus Christ!” murmured Paulie.

“What did you say?”

“I said, that's nice.” She feigned a smile. There was no point in shooting the kid down in flames. “When does it start shooting?”

“Next week.” Luba jumped up and did a little dance. “Oo-ooo, I can't wait. If this picture is a success I can get my career back on track. There's no limit to how far I can go. I'm only twenty-four.” She ran over to the big mirror that was shaped like Marilyn Monroe's head and occupied the wall between the two large windows. She examined her image for a few moments. “I could even change my hair,” she said, tugging at the pink and yellow crest of her Cyndi Lauper do. “I could even dress different. I could look, you know, normal.” She turned to face Paulie, who had remained silent throughout this little burst of enthusiasm. “Well, I could.”

The older woman measured her words carefully, like a parent talking to an errant teenager. “Kid, you can do anything, be anything you want.” She paused. “But you can't be
everything
you want. You've got to decide. It's either one thing or the other.”

“What are you saying? Why can't I be everything I want?”

Paulie shook her head. “Life just isn't like that. If you want to be really good at something, do the best you can, then you can only do that one thing. It's like me with my music. It's what I want to do more than anything. And so, it's the
only
thing I do. I don't have a husband. I don't have kids—of my own.”

“You're a lesbian, for God's sake!”

“We're talking about choices here, Luba, not sexual preferences. I could have a husband, and kids, and a house in Great Neck, and still be a lesbian, if I wanted to. What I'm trying to tell you is, you have to make choices and you have to make sacrifices for those choices. It's that simple.”

Luba played with one of the holes in her mesh panty hose, making it bigger. “You're trying to tell me something, aren't you?”

Paulie sighed. “Okay, let's go back. Remember about a year ago, after your last picture? You were so pissed off with the business you said you never wanted to act again.”

The younger girl nodded. “I was fed up with being mauled by second assistant directors. You know how it was. They kept wanting to ‘audition' me for the part of the body. I had enough, that's all.” She shrugged.

“And that's O.K. A lot of girls like you can't take the bullshit. Underneath the pink hair and the counter-culture clothes, you've got white picket fence written all over you.”

“I do not!” Luba stamped her feet on the parquet floor. “I do not! I left all that establishment shit behind me when I came to New York.”

Paulie raised her eyebrows. “You may be able to take the girl out of the establishment, but you can't take—”

“Don't give me that!” cried Luba, giving one final stomp.

“Look, don't be so defensive. There's nothing wrong with a white picket fence, if that's what you really are inside. I mean, hell, somebody has to drive the Volvo station wagons in this world.” Paulie blew a perfect smoke ring, which hovered mystically over her head for a few brief seconds.

“I'm not a white picket fence. I'm an actress.”

Paulie corrected her. “But last year you decided that acting wasn't your true calling and you were going to devote your life to something else. Remember?”

“Lots of women have babies, Paulie. We're not all like you.”

Paulie ignored the sting. “I could have a baby if I wanted to. I don't need a man, just a syringe. After all, it worked for you.”

Luba sprang to her own defense. “It worked for both of us. You wanted that baby too.”

“I wanted the baby because you did.” She thought for a moment. “And to be perfectly honest, maybe I wanted you to have it because I kind of liked the idea of us being a regular little nuclear family. But now all of a sudden you want to go back to your
career
. And what am I supposed to do? I don't have any room in my life for a baby and it looks like you don't either.” Paulie came over and put her arm around the younger girl's shoulders. “Look, kid, I don't mind what you do. Your life is your life. But you've got to make up your mind. What are you going to do about Rogue?”

Luba looked troubled for a moment, but then her face brightened. “I'll return him.”

“What!”

“I'll take him back. I'll find out from the clinic who the father was and I'll give the baby to him.”

“Luba,” said Paulie patiently, “this is a baby we're talking about here, not a leather jacket. Contrary to your experience, life is not like a department store. There is no Refund and Exchange counter.”

“Well, have you got a better suggestion? Somewhere out there Rogue has a father. He's probably a nice normal guy with a nice normal job. He'd probably love to have Rogue. I mean, it's not every day somebody comes along and gives you a baby for free. Right?”

Paulie was still shaking her head.

“Anyway, I really think it's in the best interests of the child.” Luba latched on to a line she had read in a women's magazine. It seemed to fit the occasion. “Under the circumstances, Rogue would be better off with his father.”

The older woman tried to interrupt, but Luba was firm.

“No, Paulie, don't try and change my mind. I'm taking that baby back.”

Chapter Five

Jeffrey Mondavi stuck his head around the door of Maxine's office. “How's the best-looking lady in the building?” he grinned, his handsome, slightly Semitic features radiating charm, youthful vitality and barely controlled lust.

Maxine looked up. She had been staring at the mayonnaise letter for the past half hour, still trying to come up with some advice that was conventional yet original, helpful yet noncommittal for the woman whose husband wanted to turn her into a sandwich. It wasn't easy. Not only did she have no idea what to say to alleviate the woman's comestible condition but her mind kept seguing to her own peculiar predicament. To be precise she was still feeling the aftershocks of her first serious attempt at dating in over a quarter of a century. Every now and then she would see in her mind's eye the face of the solicitous Solly, or worse, the dead but not departed Rachel, and each time the whole experience became more and more like something out of a Stephen King novel. Somehow the peculiarities of the husband whose wife was going crazy in Cleveland seemed minor compared to those of Dr. Solly S. Berman et al.